


Built To Fall Apart

by bananamuffin



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Arizona Coyotes | Phoenix Coyotes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:53:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6246187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananamuffin/pseuds/bananamuffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver thinks about what Doaner said about Mikkel having a reason he might understand and even if he didn’t, it was always worth fixing if you cared about the other person.<br/>And then he laughs, because of course Mikkel could find a way to tell him he loves him by running away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Built To Fall Apart

**Author's Note:**

> As per usual, much thanks to [WrittenFire](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WrittenFire/profile) for getting me through this.  
> Title is from Out Of The Woods by Taylor Swift and also inspired by the following quote:  
>  ** _Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together._**  
>  **Colleen Hoover**

Oliver’s mom comes to stay with him two days after the trade.

He doesn’t ask her to and she doesn’t ask if he needs her to. She just calls him up the night of, when he’s just gotten home from what feels like the longest roadie they’ve been on all year and asks, “Can you pick me up from the airport Wednesday at noon?”

He finds the Swedish extremely comforting for some reason, a bit of home. “Ja, Mamma.” He sighs into the phone, long and low. “Thank you.”

“I love you,” she says in reply and Oliver feels a little bit like a weight has been lifted off of him.

He can’t see her but he can see the look she’s giving him in his mind. The same look she used to give him when he was nursing an injury that would keep him out of hockey for a while or when he was sick and whining from his spot on the couch. Like she knew how much he hurt but all she could do was hand him the ice pack or a spoonful of medicine and wait until he felt better.

“I love you too,” he answers.

When he goes to bed a few minutes later, after saying goodbye, he has three missed calls and a lot of unread text messages. He knows who they’re from and what they’re going to say though, so he rolls onto his stomach, pulls the comforter up over his shoulders, and falls asleep.

~

When his mom sees him at the airport, she takes a moment to look at him. Oliver just stands there, waiting, and he can feel the weight of her gaze, can feel himself wilting under it, until he steps quickly into her arms. He’s a lot taller than her, but he still feels safer when she’s hugging him, like when he was a kid and a hug from his mother meant an end to all the bad things happening.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says into his shoulder, and squeezes him tightly.

Having her there with him is much more of a relief than he had thought it would be. His house is huge, felt huge even when there was two of them living there, but now that it was just him it felt ridiculous. Why did he ever think he needed a house this big? No one needed five bedrooms and a damn elevator.

It was quiet, too, by himself. He could hear the hum of the AC when it came on, buzzing throughout the house, and that’s it.

The Avs played Tuesday night. He’d told Mikkel, before he left the hotel, that he’d watch and he’d tried. But they kept showing his interview, wearing the wrong colors and telling reporters he was surprised. How happy he was to be on a “young team that’s in a playoff push.”

He’d turned it off before ten minutes passed in the first.

~

His mom makes his coffee Thursday morning. She’s got two mugs sitting on the counter, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, and Oliver knows she’s only trying to help, so he doesn’t make an ordeal of it when he picks up Mikkel’s favorite mug and puts it back in the cupboard, toward the back. He pulls out another and places it next to the other one, hoping she’ll think he just likes that one better and not that he’s pathetic.

Either way, she doesn’t bring the mug back out the entire time she’s there.

She goes to his games and makes him dinner, even though he’s entirely capable of doing that on his own, and generally makes sure he doesn’t spend too much time by himself.

They don’t talk about Mikkel. Oliver isn’t all that inclined to bring him up and when they talk, his mom steers clear of anything she thinks might upset him. Oliver doesn’t even know if he’d be upset, but he’s grateful for it anyway.

She leaves Saturday night. So Saturday morning, the day before he flies out for the game against the Avalanche, they get breakfast together, seated on the patio of a restaurant Oliver’s never been to. It’s nice out at this time of day; the sun hasn’t been up long enough for it to get too hot.

They’re talking about Kevin, about how he wants to spend the summer up at Lake Tiken and he really wants Oliver to join him when he gets back, after playoffs, and maybe Mikkel would like to come too.

He stills, looking down at his plate to avoid her gaze. It’s the first time anyone has brought him up in conversation with him since Monday; even his teammates were avoiding the subject.

“I’m sorry,” she says, reaching over to place her hand on top of his. She keeps it there for a moment, and then she says, “You can talk about it if you want, älskling. It’s okay to be upset.”

Oliver shrugs, feels his stomach turn sour. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Oliver,” his mom starts, and he can hear it in her voice, the pity, and that’s the last thing he wants.

“I’m fine,” he interjects, stabbing his omelet a little too hard with his fork. “He left, Mamma,” he says, shrugging again.

She pats his hand consolingly. “I know, älskling. I’m sorry.”

He mostly pushes his food around his plate for the rest of the meal, his appetite gone.

He’s sad when she leaves; when he has to return to his empty house again, silent and entirely too big for him.

~

All in all, he doesn’t actually have to wait that long to see Mikkel again. They fly out to Denver a week after the trade, the day before their game against the Avs, and Mikkel teams up with Doaner to get the team together for dinner.

“You don’t have to go,” Klas tells him a few hours before they’re supposed to leave. They’re in Oliver’s hotel room, sprawled across his bed watching television. Well, Klas is watching television, some show on the Food Network, and Oliver has been looking at the screen for just as long but he’d be hard pressed to recount what had actually happened in the last hour.

“Everyone’s going,” Oliver answers.

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t a complete dick to _everyone_ on the team,” Klas replies. “Just to you.”

Oliver sighs. He doesn’t want to do this now. “It’ll be weird if I don’t go.”

“The guys don’t expect you to go,” Klas says. He rolls onto his side, propping his head up in his hand.

Oliver raises his eyebrows. “Which guys?”

Klas shrugs. “Murph, Tobi, Marty. Some of the others, too.” He pauses, and then adds, “I think Doaner would understand, too.” The look on his face is too similar to the one his mom gave him over breakfast just the day before. Oliver rolls onto his back and shuts his eyes, sighing again.

“I’m going,” he says, in what he hoped was a final tone but he hears the hesitation in his voice. “It’ll be fine,” he adds.

“If you’re sure,” Klas says, after a moment. Oliver hears him shuffle himself back into a position facing the television, and they don’t talk again until it’s time to leave.

~

Doaner, Smitty, Murph, Tobi, Z, Vermy, Klas, Max, Duke and Ollie are the ones who end up going out to meet Mikkel. He lets the rest of the guys crowd around Mikkel, hugging him and greeting him, and chooses a seat on the opposite side of the table.

This part’s easy. There’s enough of them there that Oliver can blend into the background for the most part, letting the rest of them carry the conversation. Klas makes sure to sit next to him, and he’s got Duke on his other side, so he feels pretty well insulated conversation-wise; they talk enough to him that he can avoid looking down and across the table, to where Mikkel is flanked by Doaner and Max.

He feels Mikkel looking at him a few times, catches him a few other. He always looks away quickly, though, because the look on Mikkel’s face is never what he expects it to be. He looks _confused_ and a little sad and Oliver doesn’t think he has any right to be either.

Doaner picks up the tab, because of course he does, and when they’re leaving, planning to walk back to the hotel together as a group, Mikkel catches him by his elbow. “Can we go somewhere?” He asks quietly, away from the others.

Oliver looks down at where Mikkel is holding him, grip loose in the crook of his arm. He looks back to the group; most of them are having their own conversation, but Doaner is watching him, Klas behind him.

“Var sa god,” Mikkel says, and now Oliver can see it in his eyes, the pleading, can feel his stomach dropping.

“Sure,” he says, and Mikkel looks relieved. He lets go of Oliver’s arm.

“There’s a coffee shop up the street,” he says, pointing in the direction opposite the hotel.

Oliver looks at the group, catches Doaner’s eye and nods his head in Mikkel’s direction. Doaner nods, turns to guide the group back to the hotel but Klas stays there, looking at Oliver, the look on his face hard to read. Oliver just nods at him, trying to be reassuring, and turns to walk with Mikkel.

The coffee shop is cute, Oliver thinks. It’s got floor to ceiling bookshelves, lots of tables with comfy cushioned chairs, and even a few sofas.

They order their coffees and then, to Oliver’s relief, Mikkel guides them to a table with two chairs.

Oliver sits across from him and no one says anything.

He feels like there’s a lot more between them than just the table; like he could reach out with his hand across the space between them and never even touch Mikkel, that that’s how far they’ve drifted in the past week.

Well, maybe longer than that.

“You’ve hardly looked at me all night,” Mikkel says finally. His voice is soft and he sounds hurt, and it irritates Oliver.

“This was a bad idea,” he says. He wants to go back to his hotel room and shower and put the night behind him.

“Ollie,” Mikkel starts, and then he pauses, sighing. “Ollie, I’m sorry.” It’s heavy, the way it falls from his mouth, like he’s been carrying it around for too long.

“You didn’t have to leave,” Oliver says, and it feels weird to tell him this, like he’s breaking some sort of pact he made with himself. He hasn’t said it to anyone else. “You could have stayed.”

Mikkel doesn’t say anything but Oliver knows better than to think it means he agrees with Oliver.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Mikkel says, after a while.

Oliver looks at him, really looks at him, for the first time all night. He’s easy to read after all these years but it’s not like his face is all that complex tonight; he just looks sad.

“It’s a little late for that, anyway,” Oliver says. Two weeks ago would have been a good time to ask, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it now.

The longer they stay silent, the greater the void between them grows, and the tighter Oliver’s chest feels. He feels like his heart is in his throat, he can feel every beat of it, keeping him from saying anything.

They don’t say anything else to each other. Mikkel walks him back to the hotel, takes his hand when they leave the coffee shop and holds it the entire way back. Oliver thinks about pulling back, about telling him that he doesn’t get to just leave and still have Oliver, too. That he doesn’t get both ways. But he doesn’t, just lets him tether himself to Oliver as they walk down the street.

He looks like he’s going to _do_ something when they part ways. Like he’s going to pull Oliver into a hug, or maybe kiss him, or maybe just yell at him. Oliver doesn’t know what he’d do if any of that happened.

In the end, Mikkel steps away from him, just says, “See you tomorrow, O,” and walks up the street to his car.

Oliver watches him go, and then takes the elevator up to his floor when he can’t see Mikkel anymore.

~

Oliver has known for years that he is all in with the Coyotes. He’s known since the moment they drafted him that Arizona is where he wanted to win it all.

Then he’d met Doaner, who’s stuck with the same organization for 20 years now, and knew that’s who he wanted to be to this team. The guy who was there in and out, through the good times and the bad.

And then he’d met Mikkel and known, instantly, that he wanted to win with him.

Now Mikkel had traded him and the Yotes in for a team that was still in the running for the wild card, and Oliver is sidelined with an injured shoulder thanks to Mikkel’s new team.

All in all, it’s not Oliver’s best few weeks.

~

“I tried really hard to come back,” Vrby tells him after their game against the Canucks. They’re in the hallway, Oliver probably holding up the bus but he doesn’t get to see Vrby much anymore, not now that he’s moved all the way to Vancouver, so they can wait a bit.

“It’s a good place, Arizona,” Vrby continues, “we loved each other a lot.”

Oliver smiles at him. “Yeah, we still do.”

Vrby nods. He looks a little sad about it, but then Oliver really does have to go or they’re going to miss their flight, so they hug goodbye and part ways.

“Hey,” Vrby calls down the hallway after him. Oliver has just reached the doors he needs to go through, but he pauses. “It gets better,” Vrby says, and Oliver takes in the knowing look on his face with an internal sigh. “Easier.”

It isn’t until later, when Oliver is on the plane to Calgary, that he realizes Vrby knows what it’s like, too, to be so committed to something that’s not as committed back.

~

“Hey, O,” Duke says to him before morning skate in Edmonton. Oliver looks up from his stall to see Duke standing in front of him, in his UnderArmour and hockey shorts, halfway ready to hit the ice.

“Hey Duke,” Oliver says, leaning back in his stall to look up at him. He looks like he wants to ask a question but doesn’t know where to start, so Oliver asks, “What’s up?”

Duke glances over his shoulder, in the direction of his stall, then says, “Do you think you could talk to Max?”

Oliver blinks at him. “About what?”

Duke makes a face, like he had been hoping Oliver would just know what he was talking about. “He’s been taking a lot of dumb penalties since—you know,” Duke says.

Oliver does not know.

Duke sighs. “Since the trade, Ollie.” Oliver raises his eyebrows questioningly, and Duke rolls his eyes. “He tackled Garbutt, O. He got suspended, and since he’s been back, he’s been extra touchy out there. Which isn’t good for us, we need him on the ice, not in the box.”

Oliver looks at him for a bit longer, before deciding that he does know what Duke is talking about. He thinks back to the fight against Garbutt, and the game against the Canucks, where Max took two slashing penalties, a hooking, and a roughing for shoving Jake Virtanen.

“I’ll do what I can,” Oliver says, and Duke nods at him before leaving to finish getting ready.

Practices are still a bit weird for Oliver. He loves all of the guys on this team, they’re all his friends, even the new ones. But he’d sort of made a habit of sticking to Mikkel’s side during shared forward and defensemen drills, and he often finds himself turning to ask Mikkel a question, or to make a joke, only to be met with someone who was definitely not Mikkel.

It always made his chest ache, for a moment, before he pushed it down and focused on the drill at hand.

He’d made a subconscious decision, it seemed, to attach himself to Plotnikov and, occasionally, Tanger. Plotnikov was still picking up English, and Oliver remembers those days, when he was happy to be stuck next to someone who wouldn’t try hard to get him to speak in English when he was trying to play hockey, so he figured he was a safe choice. And Tanger had been around the league enough, and was old enough, to not ask Oliver any questions he didn’t want to answer.

But today he attaches himself to Max during morning skate, making sure to tap their helmets together when he pulls an impressive deke to score on Louis, or reaching out his fist for a bump when they finish a drill. When it’s over and they’re all about to head to lunch together, Oliver asks him to stay behind. Max gives him a quizzical look, but waits anyway.

Oliver doesn’t really know where to start. He goes over a few opening lines in his head, decides against them all, and finally settles on, “I miss him, too.” Maybe not the best opening, but at least it’s somewhat direct.

Max blinks at him, his eyes wide. He stares at Oliver for a few moments, mouth opening and closing several times before he sighs. “It sucks.”

Oliver nods. “I know.” He starts to say that Mikkel didn’t want to leave, that sometimes these things happen, but he stops himself. He doesn’t know if that’s true, anymore. “It’s part of the game,” he amends, reaching out to pat Max on the shoulder.

“I know it is,” Max says. He takes a moment to worry his lip between his teeth, and then he says, “I just figured we’d be lineys a lot longer.”

Oliver knows the feeling. He can’t really think of anything that will make this better, not when he’s hurting the way he is—he’d probably be taking stupid penalties, too, if tonight wasn’t going to be the first time he gets to play since the game against the Avs.

Finally he decides on, “Maybe if you take less roughing penalties and score more goals, he’ll come back,” in a teasing tone, ruffling Max’s short hair.

Max laughs, ducking away from Oliver’s hand. “Yeah, okay,” he says, sarcastically, but he’s smiling now. “I’ll work on that,” he says, in a more serious tone. “Thanks, Ollie,” he adds, pulling him briefly into a hug before walking up the hallway to get lunch.

Oliver waits in the hall a few moments. He looks at his stall, next to which is Plotnikov’s. He wonders, with a dull ache in his chest, if more goals would actually bring Mikkel back over the summer.

Then he sighs and follows Max down the hallway. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.

~

Korpi skates up to him during a pause in their game against the Oilers. He bumps Oliver’s shoulder companionably and taps their helmets together like they’re still on the same team.

“Sucks,” Korpi says, and then, “He’s kind of a dick.”

Oliver’s missed him.

~

Oliver isn’t really sure if it’s a breakup or not.

He thinks that lying to your boyfriend and moving out of the state without consulting him may constitute a breakup, but it’s hard to tell when Mikkel just up and leaves one day and Oliver doesn’t answer any of his calls.

Then again, Oliver thinks, Mikkel knew he wasn’t staying a long time before he knew where he was going. He’d had time to talk to Oliver and he hadn’t done it, and now Oliver, as the one left behind, gets to decide when they can talk.

He wakes up on the Saturday after they played the Avs to a text at 1:42 in the morning. Blindly and unthinkingly, he reaches for his phone and blinks at it while his eyes adjust.

It’s from Mikkel, which he should have known. He blinks at his phone some more until the small white words come into focus.

 _I miss you_ , the first one says. He pushes the message to the left with his thumb, hits the x, and it disappears from his display.

 _Been almost two weeks O_ , the next one says. Oliver considers replying that Mikkel had had almost two months to tell him he was leaving, that he just saw him four days ago in person and hadn’t wanted to talk, why would he want to text?

Instead, he clears the message, puts his phone on silent and goes back to bed.

~

Oliver can deal with the hockey. He can learn to have a new partner on the power play, he can learn the way Tanguay skates, slower and less fluid than Mikkel but just as sure. He can focus on the games and the practices, on making sure his teammates are good and his own play is stable. Out there he’s sure and strong and true.

But when he goes home everything isn’t as fine. He feels as empty as his house.

Before, he did everything with Mikkel. Went to dinner with Mikkel. Watched movies with Mikkel. Talked to Mikkel hung out with Mikkel drove to the arena with Mikkel drove home with Mikkel went to sleep with Mikkel woke up with Mikkel. Held Mikkel, held hands with Mikkel, kissed Mikkel.

Now he does things alone. He drives to practice and games alone, comes home alone. He cooks dinner and has twice as many leftovers as usual. He orders in instead of going out. He watches the same movie three times in a row because Mikkel was always better at deciding what to watch and Oliver can’t bring himself to look through the Netflix catalogue for more than thirty seconds.

He goes to bed alone, wrapped up in his comforter because he won’t turn off the AC, the buzz the only thing he hears when he’s home.

He wakes up alone, still sleeping on the side of the bed that was his when it was shared.

~

The Coyotes miss playoffs and it’s not even all that close. It’s hard, to start the season the way they did and still come up short. But, he tells all the reporters who ask him, now they know what they have here. It’s a good thing they’ve got going on now, a far cry from the imploded previous season, and they’re only going to get better. Next year, he promises, next year they’ll get there.

That’s their future. It has to be.

~

The Avs don’t miss playoffs. They win the wildcard spot, beating out Minnesota, and get knocked out in six games by Chicago.

Mikkel gets a point in each, two in the last, but the defense doesn’t hold out, at least that’s what Oliver gathers from his Twitter timeline. They leave Pickard out to dry more often than not, and in the end it doesn’t matter how many goals they score if they can’t keep the other team from scoring more.

Oliver wants to laugh and he wants to be bitter but he doesn’t do either.

He watches Frozen Planet on Netflix for three days, forgets to shower, and eats all of his food on the couch, the plates stacking up.

~

Klas shows up on his doorstep in the early afternoon, two days after the Avs get knocked out of playoffs.

“I brought popcorn,” he says, holding up several grocery bags clearly filled with more than popcorn. “And friends,” he adds, walking in, Murph, Tobi, Max and Duke following. Oliver watches as Klas leads them into the kitchen, closes the door, and immediately starts to clean his living room.

It’s not that he’s a messy person. It’s that three days after Mikkel left Oliver packed up all the shit he had lying around the house—a hoodie over the back of a kitchen chair, spare cell phone charger still plugged into the wall by the sofa, pairs of shoes left by the door, that damn mug in the cupboard—and thrown it in a box that he dumped in Mikkel’s old room. After he’d done that, the house seemed _too_ clean. Like Oliver hadn’t spent just as much time in this house as Mikkel had.

To remedy it, he started leaving his stuff out, too. It didn’t matter where, or what, because he was the only one here, and he just wanted to know that he _was_ here. That it was his house, now, and not his and Mikkel’s.

Not to mention all of the takeout containers from the past week piled on the coffee table. He’d started out using plates, and those are there too, but eventually it got to be too much work.

He stacks them on top of each other and carries them into the kitchen. The guys don’t seem to notice; Klas is popping popcorn in the microwave, Duke and Max are arguing over which kind of chips they should eat, and Tobi and Murph are seated at the island, reading the back covers of the films they brought and trying to decide which they should watch first.

It’s the most noise Oliver has heard in the house since his mother left. He washes the dishes by hand and lets their noise wash over him. He glances over at Klas, who has taken his eyes off the popcorn to look at him, and nods.

Klas shrugs, but smiles at him anyway.

~

In hindsight, it’s not very hard to see that Mikkel had been hiding things from him.

“The deal isn’t what I want,” he’d say, shrugging and rubbing his face with his hands when Oliver would ask what Dave offered this time. “It’s not what I want,” he’d repeat.

Sometimes, he’d say, “It’s not enough money,” and sometimes he’d say, “The term isn’t long enough,” and he’d always say, “I really, really want to be in Arizona, Ollie,” and smile at him.

But now Oliver knows what Mikkel was offered; he knows about the 5 and 6 year deals, for more than $5 million a year and he knows that Mikkel doesn’t care enough about money to turn that down as not enough.

And he knows what Mikkel meant when Oliver asked him about the phone call he’d received that Sunday night before the trade and he’d said, “It was just my agent, making sure I was sure about what I wanted.”

“Are you?” Oliver had asked sleepily. He’d rolled over, tucking himself up against Mikkel and into his warmth.

Mikkel had reached over, putting an arm around Oliver’s waist. He had kissed Oliver’s hair and tucked his chin over his head and said, “Yes.”

~

“Oliver?”

It’s the first time Oliver has heard Mikkel’s voice in over a month. He’s finding it a little hard to speak.

“Oliver? Are you okay?” Mikkel genuinely sounds worried and Oliver has to shut his eyes, screws them closed tightly and takes in a deep breath.

He means to say, “I’m fine,” or “We need to talk,” or any number of things that are not, “Why did you lie?” But that’s what comes out and he does his best not to want to take it back.

Mikkel is silent on the other end of the line. Oliver can hear him breathing, evenly, and he tries to match it to have something to do.

Finally, he says, “Oliver, it’s three AM over here.”

Oliver laughs, short and bitter. “You can never just answer the fucking question.”

Mikkel sighs and Oliver can hear him shifting, sitting up in bed. “Oliver, I didn’t—“

“Yes, you did,” he cuts in. “For two months, you told me that you wanted to be here, no matter what. That I,” he pauses, his mouth dry and his bravery leaving him. “That this team was it for you. That you wanted to win with us.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Mikkel interjects, but Oliver can’t listen to him do it again.

“You _were_ ,” Oliver says, fiercely, and it feels good to be angry at him again. He’s spent the last month and half moping in his house, he doesn’t want to be sad anymore. And he knows he’s justified. “I saw the offers, they were good deals.”

Mikkel doesn’t respond for a moment, and Oliver thinks that maybe he’s decided he doesn’t actually want to talk to Oliver, despite all the calls and the texts trying to get him on the phone for weeks, and then he says, “I wasn’t lying when I said you were it for me, Oliver. When I said I wanted to win with you.”

Oliver’s heart clenches. “Well,” he says, “you might as well have been.”

Mikkel takes a deep breath. “Ollie, I’m sorry,” he says, softly, and Oliver feels just as sad and stupid and betrayed as he had the day Mikkel left.

“You’re an asshole,” he says, vehemently. He means to hang up the phone after that, to make his point, but he waits just long enough for Mikkel to say, “I know.” Quietly, like he hadn’t even meant for Oliver to hear.

“At least you can admit that,” Oliver says, and hangs up the phone.

~

Doaner calls him two days later. Oliver knows what it’s about before he even answers the phone.

“Don’t be so hard on him,” Doaner says, in a mix between his captain voice and his fatherly voice that always leaves Oliver feeling both comforted and chagrined. “It wasn’t easy for him, either. He’s the one that had to start over.”

“But he didn’t _have_ to,” Oliver protests. He’s tired of having this argument already; he’s had it enough times with himself, and it always leads to Mikkel giving up on him, on the team, on _them_.

“Talk to him,” Doaner advises. “But let him explain. I think there’s more to it than he’s telling you.”

“Of course there is,” Oliver mutters into the phone. “Because he hasn’t _fucking_ told me _anything_.”

Oliver regrets the curse the moment it leaves his mouth. He can see, in his mind, the look Doaner is giving him right now.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and then, “But he really hasn’t.”

“You weren’t talking to him,” Doaner points out, in a calm tone. “And I don’t blame you. But you seem to have moved out of the sad stage and into the anger stage, which we’re all glad for.”

Oliver puts his feet up on the couch, settling in for the lecture.

“You know he loved it here, Harry,” Doaner says. “And we all know he loves you.”

Oliver’s heart sinks a little.

“Which means _you_ know that there’s something more going on. So when you’re ready, let him talk, eh?” Doaner finishes, and Oliver sighs.

“Fine,” he says, a bit petulantly, but Doaner is asking for more than he knows, and Oliver doesn’t have to be happy about it.

“Good,” Doaner answers. Oliver hears a high voice calling in the background on Doaner’s end, and the voices of several of his kids. “I gotta go, Harry, but just give him a chance, okay?”

Oliver thinks, slightly angrily, that he already did give Mikkel a chance, but he says, “I will, Doaner.”

He thinks Doaner is going to hang up now, but he pauses, then says, “People screw up a lot, Oliver. And usually the ones that hurt most come from the people you love, but that’s how you know you love them, eh? But take it from a happily married man, O: it’s always worth fixing.”

He hangs up after that, leaving Oliver to sit on his couch, stunned.

~

He goes home two days later, back to Sweden on the same flight as Klas.

His mother picks him up from the airport, embracing him tightly. She drives him home and makes him his favorite meal and generally doesn’t ask how he’s doing, because she already knows.

Oliver is grateful for it, and he’s glad to be home.

~

He spends a week with Kevin up at the lake. They pack plenty of food because neither of them are all that good at fishing, they mostly go to ride jet skis, soak up the sun and spend some time together. For the past six years Oliver has only really gotten to see him during the summer, and he can’t help but feel like he’s missed out on a lot of his brother growing up.

Like, for example, how he’s got his first serious girlfriend, a girl named Ella from Stockholm that he met at a hockey game. She plays football for the university and has a dog that Kevin loves, and he thinks she’ll be around a while, if Oliver wants to meet her.

Oliver smiles at him and tells him how happy he is for him, of course he wants to meet her, and he tries not to be all “love means nothing to some people so don’t get your hopes up, kid,” on the inside.

He’s not sure how much he’s missed his brother’s lack of tact when it comes to Oliver, when they’re out on the boat one day and Kevin says, “I’m sorry your boyfriend left you for a better team.”

“They’re not a better team,” Oliver says, because, really, their defense could use a lot of work and also because his boyfriend did leave him.

“Right,” Kevin replies, “because that’s what’s important here.”

Oliver doesn’t say anything. He sprawls out across the seats at the back of the boat, lets the sun warm his skin even more. After a while, he says, “It sucks.”

“I know, Ollie.” Kevin reaches over to pat him on the knee. It’s weirdly comforting—Kevin has never been one for reassuring touches, not like Oliver. “I know.”

~

“If it makes you feel better, apparently he’s having a hard time, too,” Kevin tells him later that night as they’re making dinner. It’s nice out and the sunset over the water is beautiful, so they’re outside grilling.

Well, Oliver is grilling, Kevin is laying on a sun chair, trying to act like he’s not intermittently falling asleep.

Oliver looks at him over his shoulder. “How do you even know that?”

Kevin shrugs. “Me and Mads talk.”

Oliver rolls his eyes, turning back to the grill.

When he thinks about it later, as he’s going to bed, he doesn’t think it makes him feel any better. It makes him a little angrier, because _Mikkel_ is the one who left, but mostly it just makes him sad for the both of them.

~

It takes him two weeks at home to calm down enough to text Mikkel.

_ready to talk when you are_

He doesn’t get a reply.

~

He meets with Klas for lunch.

“Long time, no see,” Klas says when he sits down across from the table. He makes a face when Oliver can barely muster up a smile. “All business today, I see.”

“Sorry,” Oliver mumbles, because he really is. Klas has been extremely patient with him over the last two months, listening to him explain everything the day after Mikkel’s trade without telling Oliver he was overreacting and has been looking out for him ever since. 

But Klas just nudges his knee under the table and smiles at him. “S’alright, Ollie. I’m up for whatever today, but you’re buying lunch.”

Oliver nods, smiles, because that’s fair.

He waits until they’ve ordered their food to bring it up, explaining the phone call with Doaner, the things Mads had told Kevin, and finally, the unanswered text he’d sent to Mikkel four days ago.

Klas looks thoughtful throughout, nodding at all the right moments and encouraging Oliver to go on. The waitress sets down their food shortly after Oliver finishes, and when she’s gone all Klas says is, “Wow.”

“He tried to get me to talk to him for three weeks!” Oliver says, and bites the end of a fry rather violently. When he’s swallowed, he says, “And now that I want to talk, he’s ignoring me.”

“Maybe he’s scared,” Klas says, between bites of his burger.

Oliver looks at him. “Of what?”

Klas shrugs. “Of making it worse.”

“How could he possibly make it worse,” Oliver asks, flatly, because really, what’s worse than lying to your boyfriend for two months before completely abandoning him? Oliver can’t really think of anything that’s not super extreme or illegal, like murder.

“Maybe his explanation won’t make you any happier,” Klas continues, and he has a point, but also, Oliver would like _some_ explanation, any at all, and he says as much.

“I don’t know, Ollie,” Klas says, his voice as patient as ever, and Oliver is so lucky to have him. “If you’re this worked up about it, maybe you should ask again.”

Oliver thinks about it, chewing a mouthful of turkey sandwich. He hadn’t wanted to reach out again, because as far as he’s concerned it’s on Mikkel now, but he really, really wants an explanation.

“Just,” Klas says abruptly before cutting himself off. He flips a fry around on his plate for a bit, and then he sighs. “Just be careful, alright?”

Oliver looks at him, confused.

Klas suddenly looks very tired and he sighs again. “Look, Ollie, I don’t blame you for being upset after he left. Especially since you two were—“ he pauses and waves his hand in a vague gesture. “Together.”

He stops again and gives Oliver a significant look. “But if you don’t like what he has to say, or if it makes it worse, I don’t want to have to drive down here to make sure you’re still showering and eating again.”

Oliver opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t know what to say to that.

The look Klas is giving him is soft, empathetic. “I just mean, I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into by reaching out again.”

Oliver nods. His mouth feels a little dry.

Klas has a point. Oliver knows that there really isn’t any explanation Mikkel could give that’s sufficient, that would make him okay with what had happened. But he hadn’t really considered the idea that it would somehow make things worse.

It’s just. It feels _heavy_ , like a weight hanging on his shoulders, around his neck, tied to his ankles. It’s with him in everything he does, the questions and the betrayal and lately, the anger. He can always feel it, the anger, simmering in his chest, threatening to boil over at the simplest things; Kevin speaking too loudly or his mom asking him one too many questions, just enough to irritate him. And he hates it. And the only thing he can think of to make this go away is to finally, _finally_ get some answers.

“I’ll be okay,” Oliver says, and then, with a grin, “Thanks, Klas.”

Klas just nods at him. He leans back in his chair, pushing it up on the back two legs for a moment before dropping it back down. “Well, I’ll be here if you’re not.”

He’s messing with the fries on his plate again, so Oliver nudges his leg under the table. Klas ignores him, so he does it again, and again, until finally Klas laughs and kicks him lightly.

Oliver leaves feeling just a little bit lighter than when he arrived.

~

It’s the middle of the afternoon. Oliver is on the swing on his back porch, his family out running errands and hanging with girlfriends for the day.

If he sits really straight, scoots as far back as he can go on the seat, his feet just barely skim the ground. He can pretend he’s fourteen again, before he hit his growth spurt and before he had anything to think about that wasn’t hockey.

He supposes this is still sort of about hockey, but only in a tangential sort of way. A means to an end, the end being Oliver and Mikkel’s brief and subsequently strained relationship.

Oliver listens to the phone ring long enough that he starts to think maybe Mikkel won’t pick up at all, and he’s trying to decide if he wants to leave a message when he hears the static-y silence that means someone has answered.

A moment passes, and then Mikkel says, “I was going to call.”

Only Mikkel could manage to piss him off in no more than five words right off the _fucking_ bat.

He takes a deep breath, trying to squash the anger down because he doesn’t want to fight again. “Well, you didn’t,” he says flatly. “And I got tired of waiting.”

“I know the feeling,” Mikkel says. There’s no heat behind it; he mostly sounds tired.

But, seriously, Mikkel has got to be joking.

It takes all of his strength not to tell Mikkel, emphatically, to fuck off. Instead, he says, “Are you going to explain or not?”

Mikkel is silent on the other end for a few moments, long enough that Oliver starts to grow restless. He pulls his knees up to his chest, wrapping the arm that’s not holding the phone around them, and rests his chin on his kneecap.

Finally, Mikkel says, “I had to go, O.”

He sounds so tired and sad, the words sit heavy on Oliver’s chest. But he still doesn’t understand.

“Why?” He asks. They’d had a good thing going, the two of them, even if the team was going through a skid. They still had each other, and they always seemed to be going right, even when everything on the ice was going wrong.

Oliver can pretty much see how Mikkel runs his hand over the side of his jaw before answering the question. “It was supposed to be better this way,” he says, and Oliver doesn’t know how many more vague answers he can take in one phone call.

“You have to do better than that,” Oliver says. He curls in on himself a little bit more.

“What do you want me to say, Oliver?” Mikkel asks sharply and Oliver finally cracks.

“I want you to tell me the _truth_ ,” he spits, sitting up straight. “I want you to tell me the reasons you came up with for leaving and for lying. I want you to stop fucking around with me and just give me a straight answer.” His grip on his phone is so tight, his knuckles are white.

Mikkel doesn’t say anything for a long time after that. Oliver imagines his face, contemplative and probably a little angry at being yelled at, the wheels turning in his mind as he formulates an answer. Oliver is getting a little sick of waiting for him to speak, because Mikkel barely left him alone for weeks, and now he won’t even talk to Oliv—

“Can I come down there?”

~

Oliver doesn’t know what to do while he waits for Mikkel to arrive.

He paces frantically on the porch for a bit. He should have told Mikkel that he couldn’t come, that he could see Oliver again when he explained himself.

But he hadn’t and now Mikkel is on his way and Oliver is in no way prepared to see him again.

He needs to do something with hands.

He searches the whole house for something to do, eventually settling on checking the fridge. Maybe he could make a sandwich or something. But when he opens the door, he sees several packages of pre-made cookie dough sitting on the shelves, and that will keep him busier far longer than a sandwich.

He looks at Mikkel for a long time when he shows up on Oliver’s doorstep, almost 15 hours later. It’s three in the morning, but Oliver is still wide awake.

He hasn’t seen Mikkel since their last game against the Avalanche, and it hits him, as soon as he sees him, how much he missed Mikkel. As mad as he is at him, seeing him lifts a little bit of the weight off Oliver’s shoulders, softens the edges of his anger, and he mostly can’t help pulling Mikkel into a hug.

Mikkel seems surprised, which Oliver thinks is fair, considering the amount of yelling Oliver has done in their last two conversations, but it doesn’t take long for him to soften. He clutches the back of Oliver’s shirt, almost desperately, and turns his nose into the hollow between Oliver’s shoulder and neck. Oliver just holds him tight, taking in the familiar scent of him, the way his body fits against Oliver’s.

“You smell like cookies,” Mikkel says, into Oliver’s neck. Oliver can’t help but laugh.

He steps back. “I made a lot while I was waiting for you.” Like, a lot. His mother had come home, took one look at the kitchen, and said, “Just make sure it gets cleaned.”

Mikkel starts to say something, but Oliver cuts him off. “You don’t get any until after you explain everything.”

Mikkel looks down at his feet, sheepish.

“But that can wait until the morning,” Oliver says. He’s suddenly tired, and he doesn’t trust himself not to wake up the whole house.

Mikkel nods in agreement, and Oliver leads him inside, where he’s already set up a bed for Mikkel on the couch.

He goes to bed, less angry and less sad than he has been in weeks.

They can fix it, whatever it is. He’s sure of it.

~

His mom gives him a significant look when she comes into the kitchen the next morning. She looks wary, and Oliver understands; it’s the same look Klas gave him over lunch that day.

He pushes a cup of coffee towards her and says, “We’re working on it.”

~

They go to the cabin up at the lake. It’s a bit of a drive, and neither of them say much to each other, but it’s a much better alternative than being at home, where his mother was treating Mikkel with a cold civility that he’d never seen before, as if just six months ago she wasn’t calling Oliver up to ask what she should get him for Christmas. When Kevin had come downstairs and seen Mikkel sitting at the table, eating eggs that Oliver had made for them, he’d said, simply, “You’re a dick, Bødker,” filled a plate with eggs, and returned to his room.

Mikkel had blinked at him across the table. Then he’d said, “I deserved that.”

“You’re just lucky he liked you so much before,” Oliver had said, and then concentrated really hard on spearing his eggs with his fork to avoid the way Mikkel was looking at him.

His father, never one to keep up with the swinging emotional complexities in the house, had sat down between Oliver and his mother, and promptly asked, “So Mikkel, how is Colorado?”

Oliver raised his eyes to look at his mother, who was glaring daggers at his father, and then to Mikkel, who managed to look like he didn’t want to answer the question while also not wanting to piss off the only person in the house who wasn’t mad at him.

Finally he said, “It’s colder than Scottsdale,” and gave his father a small smile.

His father, having caught on to the looks his wife was giving him, nodded, made a small _hmm_ sound, and didn’t ask any more questions.

So to say it’s a relief to get Mikkel out of the house is a bit of an understatement. Oliver packs them a day or so’s worth of food, throws them into the back of his dad’s orange Lamborghini, and they’re off.

Oliver knows from experience that when Mikkel really doesn’t want to tell him something, he’s content to sit in silence for however long it takes for Oliver to either extract the information from him or give up.

Oliver didn’t let Mikkel come all the way to Tingsryd to _not talk_ , so he leads them out to a small dock and sits on the edge, his feet hanging a few feet above the water, and waits for Mikkel to sit down, keeping a few feet of space between them.

This portion of the lake is pretty secluded today. Oliver looks out over the lake, watches the small waves ripple toward him. His throat feels tight, and he almost decides against speaking but—he has to know.

So he starts small. “Why didn’t you tell me what Dave offered you?”

He looks at Mikkel’s face. It looks a little pinched, his brows furrowed, but Oliver can’t tell if it’s because of the question or the light reflecting off the water. He waits.

Mikkel says, “Because you would have known I was lying.” He pauses, looks down at his feet swinging above the water, and then clarifies, “About it not being enough, I mean.”

Oliver nods. That _was_ how he had figured out that Mikkel had lied about his reasons for leaving. “Were you unhappy? With the team, with—“ he cuts off, swallows. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “With me?”

And now that it’s out there, what Oliver had been most worried about, he feels exposed. A little raw. In the half second it takes Mikkel to answer, he’s torn between wanting to know and wanting to take the question back.

“No,” Mikkel says, firmly, and it’s the most sure he’s sounded about his answer to any of Oliver’s questions.  Oliver lets out the breath he was holding, can feel his the weight on his shoulders lift a little.

And then Mikkel says, “And that was the problem.”

Oliver turns to look at him, his brows furrowed. “How was that a problem?”

Mikkel takes a deep breath. “I was too content, Ollie. I only scored twice in like two months and I was—not okay with it. I don’t know.  I wasn’t getting any better, it was like I was just content with the way things were.”

“But you weren’t,” Oliver says. _Obviously._ “You were working really hard to score more. It happens sometimes.”

Mikkel sighs, and rubs his jaw. Oliver watches him.

Mikkel shakes his head. “I wasn’t doing enough. I needed to be better.”

“So what?” Oliver says, bringing his feet up on the dock so he can turn to lean against one of the dock supports. “You thought leaving all the people who care about you would suddenly make you a better goal scorer?”

Mikkel’s mouth forms a flat line. “I thought—you’re like a safety net, Ollie.” Mikkel turns to look at him. From this angle, his hair looks blonder than usual, the sun edging him in a soft light. He somehow looks young and vulnerable and older and weary at the same time. “I could come home, and it was like nothing that happened on the ice even mattered, because I had you.”

Oliver sucks in a breath, because that’s—that’s a _lot_.

He thinks about what Doaner said about Mikkel having a reason he might understand and even if he didn’t, it was always worth fixing if you cared about the other person.

And then he laughs, because of course Mikkel could find a way to tell him he loves him by running away.

Mikkel shoots him a look, his eyes narrowed. “How is that funny?”

“It’s not,” Oliver says, but he’s still laughing. Mikkel is frowning at him, so Oliver says, “It’s stupid.”

Mikkel keeps frowning at him and Oliver tries to control himself, but god, he just feels so much _better_ somehow. Knowing that Mikkel didn’t leave because he was tired of Oliver, or because he didn’t want to be with Oliver, but because he had talked himself into thinking he was _too happy_.

Which is an entirely different matter that he needs to address but he’s going to take a moment to relish the weight that’s been lifted off of him. He takes in a deep breath and even that feels easier now.

He looks to Mikkel, who has stopped frowning and even managed to crack a smile. “It was pretty stupid, wasn’t it?”

“Just because you’re having a hard time on the ice,” Oliver says, once he’s sobered up, “doesn’t mean you have to be miserable off of it, too. I mean, how many of the guys are married?”

Mikkel’s shoulders slump, all of the tension leaving him now that he’s confessed. “That’s what Doaner said, too. But I kind of waited to talk to him until it was too late.” He looks at Oliver out of the corner of his eye, sheepish.

“Yeah, well, I think communication is something we both need to work on,” Oliver says. This is definitely something they could have worked out without Mikkel moving out of state and all the ensuing drama.

Mikkel nods and then he says, “I regretted it as soon as I got to Minny, with the team.” He swings his legs up onto the dock and crosses them, facing Oliver. “It was like, I saw my new stall, my new sweater and my new team and all I could think was that I wanted my sweater to be red, and I wanted my team to be you.”

“That’s why I kept texting,” Mikkel continues. Oliver hasn’t heard him talk this much in months; Oliver wonders if maybe now that he’s started, he doesn’t know how to stop, that it’s a relief to be able to tell Oliver everything.

After all, it is a relief to hear everything.

“I missed you so much, O,” Mikkel says, and Oliver can hear it in his voice, the desperation and the sadness. “And I hoped that if I explained, then you would understand and you’d still talk to me even if you didn’t want to be,” he pauses, and his eyes drop to his lap. He rubs his jaw again, a familiar nervous gesture. Oliver wants to reach out and take his hand to calm him. Instead, he waits. “Even if you didn’t want to be together anymore,” he finishes.

Oliver stretches his legs out between them. Even during the month where he could hardly bring himself to do anything other than watch animal documentaries on Netflix, he’d never not wanted to be with Mikkel.

All he’d wanted was for him to come home.

When Oliver doesn’t reply, Mikkel keeps talking. “And then you called, after playoffs, and I—I didn’t know what to do. I’d given up reaching out because you weren’t answering and I figured you needed space. And you were so _mad_ ,” Mikkel says, looking up at Oliver, his eyes a little wide. “I just wanted to make it better, but I didn’t think that you’d want to hear the real reason then.”

Oliver thinks about it, about when he’d made the sudden shift from sadness to anger that night after Klas and the boys came over. When he’d been so tired of being sad, of laying on his couch avoiding the rest of the house in case something reminded him of Mikkel that it had made him angry.

Mikkel was probably right not to tell him then. Well, not _right_ not to tell him, but right that Oliver wouldn’t be as receptive as he was now. He hadn’t really wanted an explanation back then, he’d just wanted Mikkel to know that he was hurting.

“Then you said you were ready to talk,” Mikkel continues, “and I meant to call, I did. But I was scared, that you’d hate me for my decision.”

Oliver makes a mental note to tell Klas he was right.

Mikkel stops talking and silence settles over them. Oliver lets it hang for a bit; it’s not uncomfortable, but he can tell Mikkel is waiting for him to say something.

“I don’t hate you,” Oliver says, finally. “I could never hate you, Mikkel.” He pauses, choosing his words. They don’t need any more miscommunication right now. “But I hate the decision.”

Mikkel nods, his mouth tight.

“You could have— _should_ have talked to me about it,” Oliver says, letting out a breath. “This whole time I thought you left because you gave up on us. On the team, too, but I mean _us_.” He gestures between them. “You lied to me about what was going on for months, Mikkel. And I thought it meant you didn’t want to be with me anymore.”

“Oliver,” Mikkel says, his voice a little desperate. He makes an aborted move, like he was going to move closer to Oliver and thought better of it. He bites his lip for a moment, Oliver can see he’s trying to think of the right thing to say. “I messed up, Ollie. I should have told you the truth from the start. But of course I want to be with you.” He pauses, looks like he’s debating on whether or not he wants to continue. “I love you, O,” he says, meeting Oliver’s eyes.

“Yeah, I figured that out around the time you said you were playing bad hockey because you were _too happy_ with me,” Oliver says dryly, but he feels good inside, warm, and he smiles at Mikkel, because how could he not. “I love you, too,” he says, simply, and the way Mikkel’s face lights up makes him feel so good, so much better than he’s felt since the day Mikkel left, that he knows he’s making the right choice. He doesn’t want to go any longer without Mikkel beside him when being with him feels like this.

“We’re good?” Mikkel asks, his voice uncertain.

Oliver hums, thinking. “It’s fixable,” he decides, but he says it with a smile that Mikkel returns.

~

“Do I need to kick his ass?” is the first thing Klas says when he picks up the phone later that night. “Because I will if I have to.”

Oliver laughs, then relays the important bits of his and Mikkel’s earlier conversation. As usual, Klas is a good listener, making encouraging noises in all the right places.

When Oliver is done, Klas says, “He’s an idiot.”

“I know,” Oliver says happily.

“I’m glad you worked it out though,” Klas says, and he genuinely sounds like it. “Are you guys…” He trails off, but Oliver fills in the blanks.

“Yeah,” he says, and then, “We’re working on it, at least.”

“Good,” Klas replies. Oliver hears him make an aborted noise.

“What?”

“Is he coming back?” Klas asks, a bit quieter than before.

“I don’t know,” Oliver says, truthfully. He thinks he probably will, Dave loves him and would be willing to work with him if he wanted to, but they haven’t actually discussed that far yet.

“It’s just,” Klas starts and then he pauses, sighing. “What he did to you was worse, I know, but you’re not the only one he hurt, Ollie.”

That catches Oliver by surprise, and then he feels bad that it did. He’d been too caught up in his own feelings to think of those of the rest of the team. He thinks back to Max, tackling Garbutt and racking up penalties in the games following Mikkel’s departure. Of Mikkel talking about winning being an important aspect in his decision, about him saying, “We made playoffs one year, and haven’t been back since,” when asked about it.

“I know,” Oliver says, finally. “I’ll get back to you on that, okay?” He’s going to make it right, especially since he knows now that Mikkel didn’t mean those things in the way they came off.

They talk a bit longer until they both have to go, but before he hangs up, Oliver says, “Thanks, Klas. For everything.”

“Anytime, Ollie,” Klas says.

~

Oliver has missed Mikkel so much.

They make dinner together, nothing complicated, just spaghetti and meatballs. Oliver is in charge of the pasta, Mikkel of the bread and salad.

Their dinner conversation is a bit weird for a while. They spend the first hour filling each other in on what they did the months they were apart. Oliver sticks to things he did with the team during the weeks that he was sad—he and Mikkel can have that conversation another time—and tells him about Kevin’s new girlfriend, who he met last week.

“They’re like, gross in love,” Oliver says, pulling a face. “It was hard to be around.”

Mikkel laughs and the way he looks at Oliver, well, he understands his brother and his girlfriend a little better.

“Landy basically adopted me,” Mikkel says, a little while later, as they’re finishing up. “I lived with him and I think he saw how miserable I was off the ice and made it his own personal mission that I was never left alone for too long.” He smiles at it, a little, and Oliver makes a mental note to thank Gabe.

They clean up the kitchen and head into the living room to watch TV. Mikkel sits about three feet from Oliver, at the other end of the couch, and Oliver sighs. He picks himself up and drops himself against Mikkel’s side.

Mikkel looks at him, surprised, and Oliver enforces his position by picking up Mikkel’s arm and tucking himself underneath it. He’s warm and comfortable and Oliver has always loved the way he fits there, right up against him.

Mikkel relaxes under him and Oliver tips his head back to see a broad smile on his face.

They watch television for a while, until Oliver starts to get a little sleepy, a product of the emotional day and being out in the sun for a long time. Mikkel wakes him up gently and Oliver mostly mills around the living room while Mikkel shuts off the television and locks the door, and then starts to follow him toward the bedrooms when he’s turned off the lights.

They reach the end of the hall, the corner where the two bedrooms meet. Mikkel just sort of stands there, waiting for Oliver to pick a room. Oliver, meanwhile, is staring at Mikkel.

It’s dark enough that Oliver can’t really see him; he can see the sharp outline of his jaw, the hook of his nose, the way his hair pokes up on top. And suddenly he’s so overcome with how happy he is, to have Mikkel tell him the truth, to have Mikkel with him again, that he leans forward and kisses him.

His lips are soft and his body warm where Oliver has slotted himself against him. He tastes a bit garlicky, from dinner, but it doesn’t even bother Oliver in the least, especially not when Mikkel slides his arms around Oliver’s waist to pull him closer. Oliver takes the opportunity to crowd Mikkel against the wall, reaching his hands up to Mikkel’s jaw, tilting his head back for a better angle to deepen the kiss.

After a moment, Mikkel pulls back. Oliver can’t really make out his face, but when he rests his forehead on Mikkel’s he can feel the way his brows are furrowed, his face tight from worry.

“O,” Mikkel says, his lips only an inch from Oliver’s. “Are you sure?”

Oliver responds by pulling back, taking Mikkel’s hand, and pulling him into the bedroom on the right.

And yeah, he’s really missed this, too.

~

In the end, Oliver sets up a group video call on his laptop.

He connects as many of his teammates as he can at the time, and smiles as he watches their faces pop up. He manages to get around 15 of them, which he thinks is pretty good, considering.

Klas connects first and the first thing he says is, “You guys are too happy, it’s gross.” But he’s smiling, so Oliver laughs it off.

Next comes Chip and Boyd, the computer set far enough away to let them both fit on the screen. Smitty and Doaner share, and somehow Max manages to cram himself, Duke, Louis and Martinook close enough together that all their faces show up on screen. Teeks pops up on his own, his son Levi on his lap, and Vermy’s next. Tobi and Murph show up last, and Oliver has no idea why they’re together, but Murph just shrugs and says, “I’ve never been to Germany.”

They’re all talking to each other, a few of them rather emphatically, when Oliver says, “Uh, I think that’s everyone guys,” and they fall silent.

“Hey, Boeds,” Max says, and a chorus of “Hey, Boeds” follow from the other screen.

“Hey guys,” Mikkel says. He looks a little nervous, his leg bouncing up and down. Oliver puts his hand on his knee to steady it, and nods at him when he looks over. Mikkel swallows. “I guess I just better get to it then,” he says, and launches into the same explanation that he’d given Oliver two days earlier.

What it came down to, Mikkel had said, was that he obviously couldn’t tell anyone he had to leave because of his relationship with Oliver—not that he was ashamed of their relationship, he’d clarified, but because he hadn’t even told Oliver his reasoning. And he didn’t want people to think he was leaving because of the money, because he wasn’t greedy, and he thought the winning thing was believable, because everyone wants to win.

“And basically,” Mikkel says, “I didn’t mean to hurt your guys’ feelings or make it seem like I didn’t believe in you, because I definitely do. I love you guys,” he adds, his lips curling into a smile.

The guys are silent for a moment, and then Teeks says, “You’re such a loser, Boeds.” The look on his face is fond.

They all burst out in the same moment, echoing Teeks sentiment, until Max shouts, “We love you too, you loser!” and everyone laughs.

“So,” Smitty says, when everyone falls silent again, “are you going to pull a Vermy and a Z?”

Vermy makes a noise of protest, but then he just shrugs and nods. “Arizona is a good place to be,” he says, by way of explanation. “Winning it all is great but if I’m gonna do it again, I want it to be with you guys.”

“Awww,” Duke says, and the group breaks out into varying affirmations of Vermy’s feelings. Oliver can’t help but smile at them—he really does love his teammates.

Mikkel looks at Oliver before answering. He puts his hand over Oliver’s on his leg and squeezes.

“I’d like too,” he answers, still looking at Oliver. “If you guys still want me,” he adds, turning to look at the screen.

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Doaner says, his voice comforting. “I can’t guarantee there won’t be a few extra bag skates for you when you get back,” he adds, chuckling.

Oliver laces their fingers together under the table—not that it matters anymore, now that the whole team knows about them. He feels more content than he has in a while, with Mikkel by his side.

“Whatever it takes,” Mikkel says, grinning.

**Author's Note:**

> Some technical notes: Lake Tiken is actually right up against Tingsryd, but for the sake of the lake cabin, I pushed it further away!  
> Max didn't actually take those penalties in the Canucks game, nor do I think he has anything against Jake (they're probably friends), I just made those up for the sake of the story.  
> Thanks for reading!


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